god this quote means so much to me. wylan thinking he was utterly unloveable for the entirety of his life, consoling himself with what conditional love his father offered him until wylan could hide his dyslexia no longer. wylan clinging to the impossible chance that his father’s cruelty was still somehow out of love. that he wasn’t a monster, that deep down wylan was still his boy.
no one had loved wylan until he met the crows, not really, not without a price. his mother had, but he hadn’t known it long enough to feel it.
all the nights wylan spent cold and alone in the barrel, crying himself bare in an empty bed. the night he spent fighting through the ketterdam harbor, hopeless and despised by the people who were supposed to love him.
wylan who knew what a kid was never supposed to know, that his own father would kill him with no remorse.
wylan who felt broken, who was sure he was broken and took every scrap of blame for it.
then he met the crows. a group of degenerate misfits who seemingly had nothing to lose. who seemed bound together by a job and nothing else.
but then suddenly he had a sweet suli girl who would wrap him in her arms when he was upset, who would reassure him that he wasn’t who his father was.
he had the deadliest boy in all of ketterdam who saw skill in him no one else had before, who would tell wylan in his own way that he was useful, that he was capable, that he was part of his crew.
he had a charming heartrender who never once doubted him, who had smiled disbelievingly along with him as his bombs detonated.
he had a tough fjerdan boy who protected him and the rest of them, who unlearned so much of the ugliness in his beliefs to be here with them all, with him too.
and he had a beautiful zemeni boy who would poke at him and tease him, who had sunk right down with him as he shattered onto the ground after he had seen his mother, who had screamed his throat raw when he thought wylan had died. who’s kiss felt like an explosion, who’s eyes felt like dangerous hope.
he had a family, he had a crew, he had people who had seen him at his worst, who had known every point of shame burrowed within him, and loved him anyway.
they were his first friends, his only friends. and they were everything wylan had thought he’d never get. but he did.